Creating an assessment in QMOD

Once you have finished creating your questions in QMOD, you will then want to bring these together into an assessment that can be delivered to students.

If you don’t have a Questionmark OnDemand account at this stage, please see our Getting Started with QMOD guide which steps you through how to get access.

Naming conventions

When it comes to naming your assessments, try and think about how to identify these clearly. Here is some key guidance to follow:

• Students may have several Questionmark assessments scheduled to them at any one time, so having a clear and unique name for these can be helpful. (We have seen a number of assessments named “Assessment 1” or “Test” which doesn’t help students identify them.)
• The following special characters cannot be used in assessment titles: ” ‘ & / \ , £ | < > : ; # +
• Unless otherwise instructed, the Assessment team will include the module code and current academic year in an assessment title.
• If you wish to re-use an existing assessment (possibly from last academic year), do not just rename the old assessment. You should make a copy of the assessment and rename the copy. This will ensure that student results from different year groups are kept separate.
• Where at all possible, avoid renaming assessment folders, as this can cause issues when it comes to publishing assessments.

Add a new assessment

Once logged in to Questionmark OnDemand (QMOD):

• Click on Authoring then select Assessments from the drop-down menu.
• Locate the module folder/sub-folder where you want to create your new assessment.
• Click on +New and select Test from the drop-down menu.
• Title (1) – Enter a title for the assessment (remember to include the module code and academic year)
• Description (2) – You have the option to enter a description for the assessment. This is not required and is only for internal use, it will not be visible to students.

In a basic assessment, there will be one question block where all questions are added. We are currently working on a guide to introduce multiple blocks of questions into your assessments, and will add a link here once this is complete.

• Introduction (3) – This is not a required field, but it is a good idea to add any introductory text you want visible to the students once they start the assessment.
• Below the Question blocks banner a default question block will have been added, called Question Block – 1 (4). To the right of this title, click on +Add then select Add / edit questions from the drop-down menu.
• The question selection page should open and you have a few options when it comes to selecting the questions you want to include in your assessment as questions can be added individually or by topic to a question block:
  • All questions from topic – choosing Include subtopics will include in the question block all the questions contained within the specified topic and all its subtopics.
  • All questions from topic as single questions – this will include in the question block all the questions contained within the specified topic as individual questions which allows you to remove individual questions added from a topic.
  • Randomly select x number of questions from a topic – choosing Include subtopics will include in the question block the specified number of questions randomly selected from the specified topic and included sub-topics.
  • Single question – you can select an individual question from a topic to add to the current question block.
• Under Select a topic / Select a question, locate the relevant topic folder. Depending on the option you chose in the previous section, you will either select a topic folder/sub-folder or a specific question and click Add ->. Once all required questions have been added click OK.
• Below the Outcomes banner two outcomes will have been added by default, Pass and Fail. You can choose to edit the default outcomes (including the score range), or delete as appropriate.
• In each of the outcomes you are choosing to use, click on Feedback and tick the box next to Total score. You can also add any general (or outcome specific) feedback that you would like to display to students at the end of the assessment. Click OK once finished.
  • (Although you may want the total score turned off for delivering tests and exams to students, it is a good idea to leave this on at this point to check the assessment is scoring correctly.)

Assessment Settings

The Assessment team will carry out a final check of the assessment Settings (5) upon receipt of a scheduling request (to ensure it matches the information provided) prior to publishing the assessment and scheduling it to students.

In order to try-out and test your assessment, you may want to edit a couple of the assessment settings. Select Settings (5):

• Under the General tab
  • you can select a different Template. More information on Templates can be found later on in this guide.
  • you can also set the Time limit of the assessment.
• Under the Item-level feedback tab
  • set the Type of feedback to End of the assessment.
  • set Display feedback to which questions to All.
  • (Although you may want the feedback turned off for delivering tests and exams to students, it is a good idea to leave this on at this point to check the assessment is scoring correctly.)
• Click OK to return to the assessment.

Once finished building your assessment, remember to click Save & Exit.

Templates

We use two main template styles which control how questions are presented to students in QMOD assessments. When creating an assessment you can select a specific template (Settings -> General). Details of our default UoD templates can be found below:

Prior to publishing and scheduling an assessment, the Assessment team will double check that an appropriate template has been selected.

Try out your assessment

After creating an assessment, you may want to preview it to ensure it displays and functions as expected before publishing and delivering to students.

To try out an assessment:

• Tick the checkbox next to the relevant assessment, select Tryout from the toolbar and a new tab should open where you can try out the assessment. (If you have a pop-up blocker configured on your browser, you may be prompted with the message “Click here if a new window did not open automatically for try out” in order to try out the assessment.)
• Confirm the correct questions have been included in the assessment.
• Answer all of the questions and press Submit to confirm they are scoring as expected.

The right/wrong and total score feedback can be turned off for delivering assessments to students, but at this stage it is useful to have them on so you can check the assessment is scoring properly.

Publishing assessments

In order to schedule an assessment to students, questions and assessments must first be published. This is not something that staff have access to do in QMOD, however this is part of the process the Assessment team carry out before scheduling your assessments to students.

You should be aware that if you edit a question or assessment after it has been published by the Assessment team, you will need to request that the question/assessment is republished. Only the last published version of an assessment is delivered to students.

Tips

• If you wish to re-use an existing assessment (possibly from last academic year), do not just rename the old assessment. You should make a copy of the assessment and rename the copy. This will ensure that student results from different year groups are kept separate.
• Please be aware that if you chose to pull all questions from topic (not as single questions) when building your assessment, you must be careful that questions are not accidentally added or removed from that topic at a later date, as this will be reflected in the assessment. (This can also be possible due to multiple authors having access to the same topic folders, but not being aware of how an assessment has been constructed.)
  • We would advise that you select individual questions from a topic folder when creating an exam, or if you have sorted all required exam questions into a separate topic folder, you can select “All questions from topic -> As single questions”.
• Although you may want to randomise the order of the questions to be presented to students, it is often easier to keep the assessment questions in order for testing purposes (especially if more than one person is testing). It also makes it easier to report any issues/required changes to the Assessment team.

Register for QMOD Support pages

Check out the Questionmark Support site for lots of advice and information. You may need to sign up for a Questionmark Communities/Support account in order to access the information.

Next steps…

The steps outlined above will enable you to create a basic assessment in QMOD. Before the assessment is published and scheduled to students, you should review our guide on Testing your assessment in QMOD.